Tuesday, 15 January 2013

Sharon Van Etten - 30 December 2012, Corner Hotel

As promised, this should be the start of things picking up after a post-Xmas pause. This show was from what seems like a long time ago, but was only a couple of weeks. Sharon Van Etten seems to be on the up and up and this show was a display of talent from someone who will hopefully be a regular visitor here. Unlike Laura Marling, who she is often compared to, the focus here isn’t simply the voice, instead she has a bunch of powerfully melodic songs, which the voice is just one component of.

Like Laura Marling, she seemed to have an annoying faux-naïf thing going on. But as the show progressed it became clear that actually, she was just genuinely nervous; becoming more confident as it became clear that (to her apparent surprise) she has a bit of a fanbase here.

Unsurprisingly, the set focussed on her most recent effort – Tramp, which has been featuring on many best-of year lists, with a few older songs and one new song (listed on the setlist as ‘Solo’, although that may simply be a description or a working title) added in.

The sound quality for this is very good. I’ve had to push the volume up a lot at times because she is pretty softly spoken; while this is occasionally noticeable, it shouldn’t be too annoying.

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